Former Aide To Bill Clinton Speaks – "My Party Has Lost Its Soul"

One reason we know voters will embrace populism is that they already have. It’s what they thought they were getting with Obama. In 2008 Obama said he’d bail out homeowners, not just banks. He vowed to fight for a public option, raise the minimum wage and clean up Washington. He called whistle-blowers heroes and said he’d bar lobbyists from his staff. He was critical of drones and wary of the use of force to advance American interests. He spoke eloquently of the threats posed to individual privacy by a runaway national security state.

He turned out to be something else altogether. To blame Republicans ignores a glaring truth: Obama’s record is worst where they had little or no role to play. It wasn’t Republicans who prosecuted all those whistle-blowers and hired all those lobbyists; who authorized drone strikes or kept the NSA chugging along; who reneged on the public option, the minimum wage and aid to homeowners. It wasn’t even Republicans who turned a blind eye to Wall Street corruption and excessive executive compensation. It was Obama.

A populist revolt among Democrats is unlikely absent their reappraisal of Obama, which itself seems unlikely. Not since Robert Kennedy have Democrats been so personally invested in a public figure. Liberals fell hardest so it’s especially hard for them to admit he’s just not that into them.

Bill Curry’s article published this past Sunday by Salon is simply extraordinary. One of the things I’ve felt has been lacking in America for some time is the ability for well-meaning people within the “power structure” to look inward and be honest with themselves about the immoral decay fellow members of their socio-economic class have wrought upon the nation via a singleminded pursuit of wealth and power. A perfect example of an ignorant, destructive oligarch completely devoid of self-awareness was put on full display earlier this year when Sam Zell appeared on Bloomberg TV and essentially said the poor just need to act more like the rich.

I started to become more encouraged recently when Nick Hanaeur wrote an incisive and introspective article, which I highlighted in the post: The Pitchforks are Coming…– A Dire Warning from a Member of the 0.01%.The chances of America getting through this current period with the least amount of chaos is greatly enhanced if members of the status quo look at their more insane counterparts running the show and forcefully and publicly condemn their insanity. It is in this vein that Bill Curry’s piece strikes a necessary chord.

He covers so many important topics in this article, which completely tosses a bucket of cold water on the false narrative Democrats like to tell themselves. From Bill Clinton’s total embrace of Wall Street and big business, to Obama’s litany of lies, deceit and oligarch coddling. He painfully admits that Republicans are further along in the introspective phase of politics than the Democrats, who haven’t even started to question how phony they are and instead continue to simply grab cash from any corner and crevice they can. He then tackles the topic of populism and highlights Ralph Nader’s new book, Unstoppable, which explains how a left-right activist alliance can and will usher in the reforms necessary to unravel the corporate-surveillance police state.

Whereas the mainstream media goes to great efforts to demonize the term “populism” in a manner similar to labeling someone a “conspiracy theorist,” Curry positions it in a more genuine and positive manner. He notes that:

All populists share common traits: love of small business; high standards of public ethics; concern for individuals, families and communities; suspicion of elites and of all economic trusts, combinations and cartels.

While I don’t agree with everything that Bill Curry or Nick Hanaeur have to say, they are to be strongly commended for truly looking inward and then saying what they see to be the truth. At this point, many of us are just shocked and pleasantly surprised to see a decent human from within the “elite” publicly criticizes the status quo and its seemingly endless cadre of unenlightened, greedy, predators.

Now without further ado, some excerpts from Mr. Curry’s piece:

In 1985 moderate Democrats including Bill Clinton and Al Gore founded the Democratic Leadership Council, which proposed innovative policies while forging ever closer ties to business. Clinton would be the first Democratic presidential nominee since FDR and probably ever to raise more money than his Republican opponent. (Even Barry Goldwater outraised Lyndon Johnson.) In 2008 Obama took the torch passed to Clinton and became the first Democratic nominee to outraise a GOP opponent on Wall Street. His 2-to-1 spending advantage over John McCain broke a record Richard Nixon set in his drubbing of George McGovern.

Throughout the 1980s Nader watched as erstwhile Democratic allies vanished or fell into the welcoming arms of big business. By the mid-’90s the whole country was in a swoon over the new baby-faced titans of technology and global capital. If leading Democrats thought technology threatened anyone’s privacy or employment or that globalization threatened anyone’s wages, they kept it to themselves. In his contempt for oligarchs of any vintage and rejection of the economic and political democratization myths of the new technology Nader seemed an anachronism.

His critics would later say Nader was desperate for attention. For certain he was desperate to reengage the nation in a debate over the concentration of wealth and power; desperate enough by 1992 to run for president. His first race was a sort of novelty campaign — he ran in New Hampshire’s Democratic and Republican primaries “as a stand in for none of the above.” But the experience proved habit-forming and he got more serious as he went along. In 1996 and 2000 he ran as the nominee of the Green Party and in 2004 and 2008 as an independent.

The campaigns defined him for a new generation, but he never stopped writing. His latest book, “Unstoppable,” argues for the existence and utility of an “emerging left-right alliance to dismantle the corporate state.” The book is vintage Nader and ranks with his best. The questions it poses should greatly interest progressives. The question is, will any read it.

The Democrats’ dismissal of Nader in 2000 was of a piece with our personality-driven politics: a curmudgeon on steroids; older now and grumpier; driven by ego and personal grievance. But Nader always hit hard; you don’t get to be the world’s most famous shopper by making allowances or pulling punches. The difference was that in 2000 Democrats as well as Republicans bore the brunt of his attacks. What had changed? It says a lot about the Democratic Party then and now that nobody bothered to ask the question, the answer to which is, a whole lot.

Between 1996 and 2000 the Wall Street Democrats who by then ruled the party’s upper roosts scored their first big legislative wins. Until then their impact was most visible in the quietude of Congress, which had not enacted any major social or economic reforms since the historic environmental laws of the early ’70s. It was the longest such stretch since the 19th century, but no one seemed to notice.

The Telecommunications Act subverted anti-trust principles traceable to Wilson. The financial services bill gutted Glass-Steagall, FDR’s historic banking reform. You’d think such reversals would spark intra-party debate but Democrats made barely a peep. Nader was a vocal critic of both bills. Democrats, he said, were betraying their heritage and, not incidentally, undoing his life’s work. No one wanted to hear it. When Democrats noticed him again in 2000 the only question they thought to ask was, what’s got into Ralph? Such is politics in the land of the lotus eaters.

Democrats today defend the triage liberalism of social service spending but limit their populism to hollow phrase mongering (fighting for working families, Main Street not Wall Street). The rank and file seem oblivious to the party’s long Wall Street tryst. Obama’s economic appointees are the most conservative of any Democratic president since Grover Cleveland but few Democrats seem to notice, or if they notice, to care.

Populism encompasses not just Bryan’s late 19th century agrarians but their close relations, the early 20th century urban progressives and countless descendants of each. Jefferson and Jackson are called fathers of both populism and the Democratic Party. Jackson and Bryan are the only Democrats other than FDR to be nominated three times for president. All populists share common traits: love of small business; high standards of public ethics; concern for individuals, families and communities; suspicion of elites and of all economic trusts, combinations and cartels.

Some recent populist talk is owing to the election of two liberals, Elizabeth Warren and Bill de Blasio. (Liberals taking Massachusetts or Manhattan didn’t used to be news.) It’s unclear how well they and other Democratic liberals can tap populist sentiment. In any case, Democrats are late to the populist dance. Mass protests of corrupt oligarchies have roiled global politics for a decade. In America the Tea Party has been crying crony capitalism since the Bush bailout and Obama stimulus. Income inequality’s so bad Mitt Romney wants to raise the minimum wage.

Meanwhile the populist revolt on the right persists. In 2010 the Tea Party declared open season on GOP incumbents. It has since bagged quite a few. But Republicans don’t just fight over offices, they fight over ideas. It’s hard to track all the players in their endless policy scrum: Heritage, American Enterprise, Focus on the Family, Club for Growth, etc. Rand Paul pilfers Democratic issues like a fox stealing chickens while dynasty star Jeb Bush grapples with such timeless questions as whether there can be such a thing as a conservative social program.

Democrats aren’t even having a debate. Their one think tank, the Center for American Progress, serves their establishment. (Its founder, John Podesta, once Clinton’s chief of staff, is now counselor to Obama.) The last real primary challenge to a Democratic senator was in 2006 when Ned Lamont took on Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman. They say the GOP picks presidents based on seniority. Two years out, Republicans seem headed for a bloody knife fight while Hillary Clinton may be headed for the most decorous, seniority-based succession in either party’s history. (If she loses this time it will be to herself.)

This is where he gets into the rapidly emerging and “unstoppable” left-right activist alliance. I have personally been pushing for such an alliance for quite some time. Most recently, I wrote about it in my article from last year: #StandwithRand: The Filibuster that United Libertarian and Progressive Activists. In retrospect, it appears that filibuster may have historically marked the beginnings of such an alliance in Washington.

I also think the following graphic makes the point perfectly:

Now back to Bill Curry…

Nader cites other issues, most culled from his own experience, on which left and right collaborated. He predicts convergence on topics ranging from civil liberties to defense, corporate welfare and open government. He assays 25 ideas he deems ripe for alliances and the strategies for forming them. He says all appeal to a growing populist movement. It’s this movement he calls unstoppable.

To many, Nader’s vision will seem naïve, as will the book’s very title. Surely a lesson of our time is that all progress is stoppable. Not long ago optimism was in vogue. Obama’s slogan then was “Yes we can.” Today it could be “It turns out we can’t.” His basic brief: “With an economy so broken, government so broke, politics so corrupt and Republicans so crazy, no one could do better, so quit whining: from now on, this is as good as it gets.” Better the Obama of 2008, or the Nader of today who insists “pessimism has no place in a democracy.”

Some of the ideas in “Unstoppable” may seem small bore: defending whistle-blowers, auditing defense budgets, loosening restrictions on standing to sue. Some need elaboration — encouraging community-based businesses, reforming government procurement — while others seem too long a reach: tying the minimum wage to inflation, getting Congress to do its constitutional duty on declaring war. But all relate to systemic reforms Democrats no longer espouse.

What agrarian populists did best was battle cartels and advocate for a kind of homegrown communitarian capitalism. They busted price fixing railroads and granaries, fought for rural free delivery and established cooperative banks that still provide a third of all credit to rural America. Most amazing, they did it all via Congress amid the venality of the first Gilded Age. Powerful trusts were turning farmers into wage slaves and the world’s greatest democracy into just another corrupt oligarchy when Populists and Progressives rose as if from nowhere to stop them.

If it happened in the Gilded Age, it can happen now. There’s no choice actually, it has to happen.

Parallels to our own time could hardly be clearer. Like invasive species destroying the biodiversity of a pond, today’s global trusts swallow up everything smaller than themselves. The rules of global trade make organizing for higher wages next to impossible in developed and undeveloped countries alike. Fights for net neutrality and public Wi-Fi are exactly like the fight for rural free delivery. Small businesses are as starved for credit as small farmers ever were. PACs are our Tammany Hall. What’s missing is a powerful, independent reform movement.

Republicans make their livings off the misappropriation of populism. Democrats by their silence assist them. Rand Paul is more forceful than any Democrat on privacy and the impulse to empire. The Tea Party rails loudest against big banks and corporate corruption. Even on cultural issues Democrats don’t really lead: Your average college student did more than your average Democratic congressman to advance gay marriage.

Mistaking the nature of the crisis, Obama mistook massive fraud for faulty computer modeling and a middle-class meltdown for a mere turn of the business cycle. Had he grasped his situation he’d have known the most he could do by priming the pump would be to reinflate the bubble. Contrast him to FDR, who saw the systemic nature of his crisis. To banks Roosevelt offered only reform; financial help went to customers whose bad mortgages he bought up and whose savings he insured. By buying into Bush’s bailout, Obama co-signed the biggest check ever cut by a government, made out to the culprits, not the victims. As for his stimulus, it didn’t cure the disease and hefty portions of it smelled like pork.

Liberals have spent the intervening years debating macroeconomic theory but macroeconomics can’t fathom this crisis. This isn’t just a slow recovery from a financial sector collapse, or damage done by debt overhang or Obama’s weak tea Keynesianism. We’re in crisis because of all our broken systems; because we still let big banks prey on homeowners, students, consumers and retailers; because our infrastructure is decrepit; because our tax code breeds inefficiency and inequality; because foreign interventions bled us dry. We’re in peril because our democracy is dying. Reviving it will take more than deficit spending and easy money. It will take reform, and before that, a whole new political debate.

Reading “Unstoppable” reminds one of Nader’s standing among the ’60s reformers who formed populism’s last great wave. The book is drenched in populist themes: distrust of big business and big government, faith in democracy and contempt for its corrupters, defense of all things small — towns, businesses, people — against the inevitable predations of all things big. Among its lessons for would be populists:

For things to improve Democrats must come up with better ideas and learn how to present them. So why don’t they?

One reason is that today’s Democrats think politics is all about marketing. While Republicans built think tanks Democrats built relationships with celebrity pollsters. When things go awry one pops up on TV to tell us how they “lost control of the narrative.” Asked to name a flaw, Obama invariably cites his failure to “tell our story.” Judging by his recent book, Tim Geithner thinks failing to tell his story was the only mistake he ever made. People don’t hate the bailout because Tim Geithner gives bad speeches. They hate it because their mortgages are still underwater.

Democrats think the power of money is greater than the power of ideas. Nader thinks that with the right ideas you can win even if outspent 100-to-1. Every year Democrats further dilute their ideas to get the money they think they need to sell them. The weaker the ideas, the more ads they need, the more money it takes, the weaker the ideas. As you can tell from their ads, they’ve been at this a long time.

Absolutely brilliant and cutting observations.

One reason we know voters will embrace populism is that they already have. It’s what they thought they were getting with Obama. In 2008 Obama said he’d bail out homeowners, not just banks. He vowed to fight for a public option, raise the minimum wage and clean up Washington. He called whistle-blowers heroes and said he’d bar lobbyists from his staff. He was critical of drones and wary of the use of force to advance American interests. He spoke eloquently of the threats posed to individual privacy by a runaway national security state.

He turned out to be something else altogether. To blame Republicans ignores a glaring truth: Obama’s record is worst where they had little or no role to play. It wasn’t Republicans who prosecuted all those whistle-blowers and hired all those lobbyists; who authorized drone strikes or kept the NSA chugging along; who reneged on the public option, the minimum wage and aid to homeowners. It wasn’t even Republicans who turned a blind eye to Wall Street corruption and excessive executive compensation. It was Obama.

A populist revolt among Democrats is unlikely absent their reappraisal of Obama, which itself seems unlikely. Not since Robert Kennedy have Democrats been so personally invested in a public figure. Liberals fell hardest so it’s especially hard for them to admit he’s just not that into them. If they could walk away they might resume their relationship with Nader. Of course that won’t be easy.

Populism isn’t just liberalism on steroids; it too demands compromise. After any defeat, a party’s base consoles itself with the notion that if its candidates were pure they’d have won. It’s never true; most voters differ with both parties. Still, liberals dream of retaking Congress as the Tea Party dreams of retaking the White House: by being pure. Democratic elites are always up for compromise, but on the wrong issues. Rather than back GOP culture wars, as some do, or foreign wars, as many do, or big business, as nearly all do, they should back libertarians on privacy, small business on credit and middle-class families on taxes.

Thank you Bill Curry. If there were more people like you in the establishment, we might not be in the current predicament.

We already did that, Kos, and OJ too. Door swings both ways, don'tcha think? OJ is black and Zimmerman's a 'nice Jewish boy'. People are dim-witted and highly prejudiced; outraged at the things they themselves propagate.

I voted for him when he ran against Bush. I was surprised to see so many people older than me dismiss him. For their generation, he was well known, had done some good things, and while some of his ideas may have seemed far fetched, he was certainly more capable than Bush. Plus he had actually done some good for the people.

Useless when it counts -- as he is the Useful Opposition for TPTB, when they need him the most and the country needs him the least. At other times he plays the "good citizen" role, to keep his deep cover.

Nader has plenty of the crazy in him. I researched his philosophy for a book i wrote on opposition to nuclear energy. His group are "decentralist anarchists", not true communists. It leads to idiocy like being for solar energy because it disperses production of energy to the proles, rather than because it is efficient. In the end, just another maniulative fascist.

this guy is right, but he is still wanting government to do things it is not supposed to do. No where in the constitution does is give the govt the authority to conduct all of these welfare programs, social security, medicare/caid, and many others. This guy is missing the point entirely. No way can you give the govt this much of our income and this much power over us, and not have our present situation come to be. And we are heading in the wrong direction, as it keeps getting worse not better. And as to this guy talking about how the only way billary can lose is if she does it to herself points out the problem right there. Same deal as republicans. Sabotage ron paul every chance they get, and put mitt romney on the ticket. I refuse to vote for that, just like i refused to vote for mccain. But, most republicans, just like most democrats, turn out to vote for whoever the establshemnt candidate is. Those who run this shitshow know that despite all theri proclamations not to support the romneys of the elections, they know most will still turn out and vote republican just to keep that nasty democrat out of office, or vice versa. And that is why they don't listen to these people. Hopefully this last election taught the republican party a lesson: the ron paul type voters will not turn out and vote for a romeny/mccain type, even if it means obama or one like him gets another term. And they will never win another national election without us.

If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got.

+1 for this: Most people vote against the other guy, not for the guy they voted for.

I did that once, then I woke up and realized that I was supporting the charade. If either the RNC or the DNC supports or endorses a candidate, it's almost certain that once elected, they will not be acting in our best interests.

OK, so let's piss off as many people as possible in the shortest, most direct way

In China, you have one party. In the US, you have the choice between two parties

so if I had the choice between the Chinese political system and the American one, I'd go straight to the American one

Russia? does not qualify, then it's... more complicated than that. In theory, I'd have a choice

but the American system is in favour of this duopoly of party power. a duopoly is, by definition, an extreme form of oligopoly, only trumped by a monopoly

and why is this so? why can't Americans have the choice between more then two parties? basically it's... tradition. like the election of one sheriff, instead of two (note that Romans never elected one, it was always two... with the exception of a dictator in crisis times)

Dear American Cousins, please realize that you are using a very old electoral system. Compared to other countries, it's like you are still sticking to DOS

And no, as much as it hurts me, no, you can't "progress" to direct democracy while still using the First Past The Post electoral system... without risking a very classical fascist result. At least this is the historic experience

Tradition may be part of it. But if the politicians applied their laws to themselves, the DNC and RNC would be shut down under antitrust and RICO statutes, and all the principals would be heading off to prison.

yes, but that's corruption. while political systems are a tool to favour or prevent corruption... through elections. and if you try to clean the stable from manure with a very small antique spoon... you eventually drown in manure

A brilliant analysis, corrupted by the continued pandering to the Red Team/Blue Team meme. Just face it, Bill Curry, both parties are corrupted beyond repair. Uniting two corrupt heads attached to one corrupt snake body does fuck all except make one all-powerful snake, aka totalitarianism. What we need is a whole new party that discards the usual talking points of "paying your fair share", "social justice", "making the world safe for democracy", etc. Both the Reds and the Blues whore out to the same shadowy puppet masters. I say fuck both parties. Let's return to what this nation started out to be: a constitutional republic. The Founding Fathers weren't high on the intoxicants of the day when they wrote our Constitution. They were students of history and observers of failed empires. There is a reason they chose to enumerate the specific rights that are enshrined in the founding documents. It was to limit the power of central government, and to limit the influence of outside forces over the central government. The corpse of Thomas Jefferson is revolving in its grave right now.

If the Founders wanted to limit the power of the central government, they would have kept the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution was as much of a power grab as they could get away with. They knew over time that the power gaps would be filled in. I don't think Hamilton and the Federalists were really interested in any limitations on power at all.

Mike Krieger has been writing for a long time on the burgeoning police state and the crypto-fascist circular alliance that exists between big banks, big corporations, and big government, all made possible by fiat money that can be printed on a whim.

And then he turns around with this stuff? "Fixing" government will happen due to some mysterious "unstoppable" left-right activist alliance?

Another variant on "if only my swell guy got into office? Then everything would be Skittles and unicorns?" Now who's being naive?

No one in the "power structure" is a "well-meaning" person. By definition, power (a) corrupts and (b) attracts the corruptible.

The only logical reason that Curry wrote his damning-with-faint-praise Obama hit-piece, and that it was allowed to be published in a MSM rag like Salon, is because the Demopublican party is already preparing itself to distance itself from the current Teleprompter-in-Chief. He's been their sock puppet for six years and he's done well for them in that regard.

This way, in two years the Demopublican party can offer up their next hope-and-change savior. Maybe Hitlery. Maybe Bush III. I shudder to think of any more.

The scam called globalization is one reason we are in this mess. United Nation's Agenda 21 is real yet we never hear a word of it. What business does the UN have in our countries? These self-appointed rich assholes are not interested in making this a better world, that is quite clear. Bill Clinton, who rode the tech bubble for 8 years, is as useless as the asshole on his arm (his wife). Deindustrializing your own country is slitting the throats of a couple hundred million people and for what? To place China into the role of top dog? China, who within the last several decades, saw famine that took several million people out of the data base, and the remainder left to slave labor under the point of a gun. Oh yes, China is a role model ::eye roll::.

It's still the same thing: power concentrated centrally. You think Ye Olde Serfs had a chance to depose His Royal Majesty? Not a fucking chance. Kings were deposed only by the nobles or armies from other nations. Same as the current situation with central governments run by presidents/premiers/prime ministers, etc. Either the people behind the scenes take 'em down, or some invading army sets up a new government that strangely smells just like the old government. The peasants still get screwed up the poop tube.

On the one hand the idea of everyone getting together and holding hands in the middle road while striding confidently into a bright new future is appealing to me, I can understand the impulse toward hope even while I myself am inclined toward despair. Another chance for America would be awesome. But I suspect the Republic is already dead and like Rome is on the long slide down into the dustbin of history after it's pumpkin moment of rot within with hordes of barbarians without. I just can't picture all the fat bottomed ones getting off their arses from in front of their electronic devices of choice to become an irresistible political force of good to lift the U.S. of A. back into the glory of it's halygon day

Many people here don't know this cuz you didn't come out of your coma until AFTER the market crash and the housing bust...

But many of the Ron Paul Revolution '08 campaign were disillusioned democrats. Mainstream pugs were still asleep cuz they were too busy trying to make sure Obama didn't win, and Ron Paul couldn't do it. Most of you didn't even know who he was then.

I did. And there are many older posters here who did. It was uplifting, to say the least, to hear someone say something TOTALLY different... to say things that made REAL sense... To be critical of things our cog dis refused to permit...

Then Sarah Palin came in... Along with the highly marketable TEA PArty EXPRESS. That chased anyone riding the line out quick. More war again, domestically and abroad. Downhill since. Deeper divide. Many of you here are proponents. Hardly populist anymore.

Obama has done for the left what Bush did for the right... Help a large part of the thinking public to LOSE FAITH.

'I did. And there are many older posters here who did. It was uplifting, to say the least, to hear someone say something TOTALLY different... to say things that made REAL sense... To be critical of things our cog dis refused to permit...'

What exactly was refreshing about it? He had been saying those things for years. Was it refreshing because now you got to see it on TV?

Your first sentence had promise. But your spelling and tone ruined it. You are like a political hipster: "I knew him before it was cool."

There is a galactic difference between the truly'Faithful' and the voters left and right.

So much of the left and right are in an unthinking, unfeeling zone of habit, no different than an addiction to fat foods. They do what they do out of nothing more than habit.

They are not faithful, they are weak, incapable of dealing with the withdrawal, the discomfort of changing their comfort level temporarily for a far greater good, much like the obese human bean devours diet books while she snacks on an entire box of Marshmallows.

All populists share common traits: love of small business; high standards of public ethics; concern for individuals, families and communities; suspicion of elites and of all economic trusts, combinations and cartels.

That might have been so many decades ago.Now it's just reflex pandering to the older readers.

Even on cultural issues Democrats don’t really lead: Your average college student did more than your average Democratic congressman to advance gay marriage.

And here the pandering to younger readers.Am I the only one who sees a glaring contradiction between these two statements?

this is a choppy presentation of Naders ideas anyway. Nader submitted a list of 20? people he thought would make good presidents, (i only recognized about 1/3 of the names) most of them are business entrepreneurs including (gasp) Bill Gates. Nader has also suggested such off the wall items as public ownership of NFL teams. so before you think you know who Nader was, find out who he is. i think if Nader could summarize his views, it would be this, if you don't like the corporations which run the country, empower government to form new corporations which better serve our needs. (and a lot of you immediately reject this because government run enterprises have been wasteful and inefficient, by analogy bill gates created his own government agency, the department of personal computing, paranoid, obfuscatory, and opaque) so why would Bill Gates be a good president. NO FUCKING IDEA. but you see the difference betwen MS and USG is nothing really, so why not make them accountable to GAAP, and public hearings (senator yes Windows 7 is not a success. why is that Mr Gates? you are running a public trust here?) Nader is a hopeless optimist, but even that won't sell Obama. sigh

Gates is anointed by the elites, his wife is a Bildeberger. Don't count out the Bitch of Buchenwald either, I remember when Shrillery so magnanimously deferred to this POS while grinning from ear to ear. She had been promised the Presidency if she would be a good little girl. A lot has changed since that night and they may drop her like a used rubber.

Never forget that if the elites can create $4 trillion by the touch of a keyboard, they can create 10 million votes with another punch of their keyboard.

A total reset without funerals won't accomplish Jack Shit. We beeze fucked!

A populist revolt among Democrats is unlikely absent their reappraisal of Obama, which itself seems unlikely. Not since Robert Kennedy have Democrats been so personally invested in a public figure. Liberals fell hardest so it’s especially hard for them to admit he’s just not that into them. If they could walk away they might resume their relationship with Nader. Of course that won’t be easy.

I occasionally visit left-wing websites (commondreams.org, counterpunch.org, alternet.org), and the lefties, at least the active ones, do know that Obama and the Democrats have betrayed them. Probably about the same percentage as conservatives who know that the Republicans don't represent them.

This article is a good example of why I think Hillary has no chance on becoming president. The views in article above likely represent the majority view of democratic voters. Democrats have moved sharply left in the past two decades and Hillary is a relic of the past. She is a near Neo Con on foreign policy corporatist on everything else. She is more a near perfect Rhino then a Democrat. The Democrats overthrew her once in 2008 and I see no reason they wont do the same in 2016. I see no way she will make it through the primary's without a serious opponent emerging and that opponent will take off like wildfire because Democrats are just as pissed off at Washington as republicans are.

How anyone, at ZH, can think one party is better than the other, that both parties should not be strung up and that making the corruption of the party more important than America, is beyond me. At this point you have to be a total (expletive) to think either party is anything more than a bunch of traitors.

Given the amount of latitude on this site, the overwhelming majority of which are very high information, savvy observers and participants in the destruction of our false gods, and goddesses, to destroy the current zeitgeist------it is a wonder that Tyler wouldn't be more critical of anyone who attempts to even think that one party is more ethical than another, less criminal, enlightened, and superior is a puzzle.

That they aren't tooting the horn constantly warning us incessantly for the plague upon us---- a century of Incumbency------as the only party in America, is also a puzzle.

The mindless penchant of voters to ally themselves with their party as loyal and religiously attached to their guy, as rabidly obsessive as the fans of the home teams, compounds the problem of Incumbency, and little to nothing is said about it.

Yet another reason the southwestern states should secede---- as if the multibillons of tax dollars that completely ineffective enforcement of illegal immigration by the 1000 a day isn't reason enough to disassociate from the Union.

We're headed for England and the socialist states of Europe faster than disappearance of a flea fart in a high wind.

I'm sorry, I don't like the gop or the religious nuts, but I fucking hate progressives. Supercilious, crypto-fascist twats who want nothing more than to use tax money to pay guys with guns paid for with tax money to come and take away my guns because guns are bad, except when used to take guns from people who think the 2nd amendments exists because power corrupts, most especially those who crave power.

And taxes, and open borders, and thought policing, and endless regulations, and taxes, and systemic myopia, and an obdurate inability to learn from the history of government/socialist/left-fascist violence.

In the age of computer tabulated voting, elections are only am form of mastribation. Like cheering on your favorite sports team. The MSM has already nominated Hiltery if not deemed president elect. She has already been given the nod by the ruling elite. If Hiltery should slip up before the election then we have jeb lined up. Heads they win tails we lose. Two skanky whores that are practically interchangable.

Hiltery gets the nod because of the fan base that will not be critical of the first women president she is on their team. Anybody being critacal will be automatically labeled a women hater the uses racial slurs under their breath and hates Isreal. No matter how bad she sodomizes every single bleeding orifice of the American populus they will defend this politacal slut right up till the day they get locked up in a re-education camp. Probably continuing to defend her even after that.

then you get a private Oligarchy of the size that made the current problem and then asked the government, tiny or big, --(think 1929 crisis for first and 2008 crisis for second)--, TO BAIL THEM OUT.

In 1930 they, the government, couldn't, whence the Great Depression as Keynesianism and public deficit spending had not been invented...

In 2008 they could and we have the worst of both worlds.

The keynesians and monetarists today say we saved the world economy from a repeat depression in 2008. The price the world pays is that the money line--controlled by FED monopoly-- is now totally corrupted.

And now debt crunching seems impossible as we run and run towards a looming fiat asymptote.

That he was part of the Wasp cabal nobody can deny as his pedigree demonstrates, BUT he levelled the playing field somewhat between the haves and the have nots without destroying the innovative pump !

He taxed the rich and it didn't hurt Capitalism as such as the same rules worked in the 1950s and 1960s, before Pax Americana went Ape shit Oligarchy MIC and deeper into debt spending under LBJ and NAM/Great Society spend.

interesting article, interesting picture showing the convergence of the demand from both "Occupy" and the "Tea Party"

I'm puzzled though by this:

"Whereas the mainstream media goes to great efforts to demonize the term “populism” in a manner similar to labeling someone a “conspiracy theorist,” Curry positions it in a more genuine and positive manner. He notes that:

All populists share common traits: love of small business; high standards of public ethics; concern for individuals, families and communities; suspicion of elites and of all economic trusts, combinations and cartels.

IMHO "Populism" is used in the worst possible way in all this

If I google it, I get this definition of Populism: "the political doctrine that supports the rights and powers of the common people in their struggle with the privileged elite". My reaction to this is...WTF?

If I go to wikipedia, I get the same definition, but at least I get a banner saying "the neutrality of this article is disputed"

So who uses the term in it's original, pejorative meaning? And wikipedia helps with this little gem:

"Political parties and politicians often use the terms populist and populism as pejoratives against their opponents. Such a view sees populism as merely empathising with the public, (usually through rhetoric or "unrealistic" proposals) in order to increase appeal across the political spectrum (cf. demagogy)"

And this is where I recognize better the term, and where I too use it. By saying: you are being populist, I mean you are proposing a political "solution" which sounds good, and will get you votes, but it's not realistic or well thought out... and you know it

Populists propose price controls. They don't work, but hey, they sound good (depending from the country)

One obvious one is where it extoles the farmer cooperative banks - provide over one-third of agricultural cradit. Of course they would not exist without the US Govt guarantee. They are interlinked operations with some pretty inadequate people on the boards. Their operations would be in a shambles without the government guarantees and subsidies to the farmer borrowers.

FedGov has become too big to be accountable, especially when owned and operated by political party hacks.

It's too big to fail, too big to succeed, and too broke to fix.

There are too many demanding too much of gov all the while thinking the other guy wants big gov. Sadly, this gov accurately reflects the people with all our human imperfections, weaknesses and frailties.

Our oil-enabled economic successes turned Americans from debating real issues of substance to social (and mainstream) media rumor/gossip/bullying. The collective machinations of today's broadcast media is a travesty to every instinct of journalistic integrity.

Any proposed "solution" I've read or heard is merely tinkering around the edges. None will solve it until the people become hungry or scared for their lives enough to face reality-based facts square in the eye and change their own behaviors in accordance with reality.

The time approaches when cold hard reality will once again frame the decisions of the day, not hopey changey take-from-the-rich-give-to-the-poor (after my cut, of course) policies.

Any tyrant, whether left or right, is still a tyrant. Only a free, sovereign, responsible, moral people are capable of governing themselves. If you think we are all that, happy days to you. If, as I do, you think those attributes are denigrated by the intelligentsia of the day and vilified by the anti-moralists then look out below. There's no rainbow, no unicorns and no magic money tree.

The plain truth behind this subject matter makes this discussion moot. It matters not who would be the next president. The entire SYSTEM that has displaced our constitutional republic is mathematically guarunteed to implode in an absolute spectacular fashion. The dollar is doomed. The federal treasury is empty.Federal entitlement obligations are beyond imagination. Interest rates will rise and servicing the interest payments will criple everything. This strip mining of our republic is almost complete and when the storm hits, the "entitled classes" are going to burn the inner cities to the ground. Racial rioting and hatred will explode.

And dont forget about WWIII. Just where the fuck is the money to support that fiasco going to come from?

Roll out the guillotines and call every bankster and D.C. politician to face the music. They have a no-fly/terrorist list? We have one too, and you list makers are on it as well. Of course, Billary, you two will draw a spectacular crowd. We look forward to your last words.

There is no political solution to diminishing resources and exploding populations.We have been in contraction since the 1970’s.Brilliant control freaks papered over our collapse by debasing our currency in a grand game of bluster and deceit.A series of resulting bubbles gave us the illusion of growth while the torrent of free money gave us access to the world’s cheap labor and oil. Unable to compete with the world’s slave labor our manufacturing sector was wiped out and replaced by legions of money changers.

The blue collar workers fell out of the system joining the ranks of the lower paying service sector and going on the dole.The bread and circuses created to placate the dependent class exploded their numbers.As a consequence anyone not aligned to benefit from the state’s largess is swimming upstream and will in exhaustion surrender to the prevalent trend of dependency. Now what remains of the middle class works for government.

Mistaking the nature of the crisis, Obama mistook massive fraud for faulty computer modeling and a middle-class meltdown for a mere turn of the business cycle. Had he grasped his situation he’d have known the most he could do by priming the pump would be to reinflate the bubble.

Really? An Alinskyite doesn't make mistakes about crises. He (or his controllers) grasped the situation fully and did exactly what was needed to turn the screws tighter on the middle 70% of the population, rewarding the top 10% and bottom 20%. Another 30% of the electorate are idiot/leftists and will take any loss needed to feel they voted for the humane option - as long as they think somebody else pays more. If it was a 'mistake', he would not have made campaign promises of doing the exact opposite of what he did.

How much of a 'mistake' can it be to turn the USA into a financial and material supporter of Hamas/AlQueda/ISIS? That's a 180 degree about-face of foreign policy, and if just a mistake, would have been stopped by any adults in the room.